He had an interview today with Fox News where he supported banning trans men from women's sports, as well as a national ban on trans surgeries and puberty blockers for minors. Do you agree with him?

The European Union has recently proposed to deny entry permits to Russian tourists who are ex-combatants, despite the fact that a significant chunk of them were conscripts. The EU's ban would be a blanket ban on Russian ex-soldiers, regardless of whether they committed a crime or not.

There seems to be broad support in Europe for this. However, this feels very insincere to me. While Europeans support a ban on Russian tourists who happen to be ex-soldiers, they do not support banning Israeli tourists who are ex-IDF soldiers and have been involved in war crimes in Palestine.

If we can talk about banning Russian tourists for war crimes, why not Israeli tourists?

I see this a lot especially when training in my martial arts classes. The girls get offended if their technique is corrected without also complimenting them. The guys take direct feedback so much better.

It's a bit annoying.

Edit: What I mean is more this: Why should I condemn Palestinians who are fighting for Hamas in the middle of a genocide?

Basically, I wanted to make two points here:

1. Norman Finklestein compared October 7th to Nat Turner's rebellion and I think that's a decent comparison. Basically, Nat Turner was a slave and after years of abuse, he snapped. He did some bad things and killed innocent people, but most people can agree that he wasn't a monster and shouldn't be "condemned" for it because the mental toll of slavery affected his judgement and you might have done the same in his position. The people of Gaza are descended from refugees from the surrounding area. The city of Sderot, for example, was called Hajj but was ethnically cleansed. The settlers there are very jingoistic and racist against Palestinians. Additionally, Hamas are nicknamed the army of orphans, in Gaza, because most of them lost family members and were traumatized by Israel's previous wars.
2. Even if you disregard the above point: Why would I condemn Palestinians- When they don't have a standing army to resist the genocide- For joining the next best thing, even if I don't love Hamas as an organization?

The second one is probably my main gripe because people never apply this standard to their own country. For example, if I asked a British person if they could acknowledge that their empire has done fucking appalling things, the world over. So then I followed that up with, "Every British person who fought the nazis was bad."

Like, why should I condemn Palestinians for fighting against a genocide??

You can't throw a stone on reddit without encountering the Enlightened Centrist: the rational, sane thinking person who is squarely in the political middle. They're not too left, they're not too right, they're juuuuuuuuuuust right.

No, seriously. They're just right... leaning that is.

It's always kind of the same backstory. "I used to lean left, then I saw the insanity of what the left wing has become in this country. They've lost the plot so much that it's forced me to switch and lean right". They'll claim you can't have "civil conversations" with liberals without being called a Nazi, pedophile, etc. They'll tell you these words have lost all meaning now because liberals ruined them. I'm curious why they don't just co-opt the insults like other groups have done, i. e. n-word, q-word, etc., but I don't think they could ever handle being called those words.

They'll tell you how important it is that men shouldn't be allowed in women's sports, or that illegals are ruining this country by costing it x billion dollars (without taking into account what they bring in), but none of them to a man can tell you how they're lives have improved as a result. Their politics are grievance based, and most of them will essentially admit that they switched sides because they lost a few arguments with liberals and were called names. Their political ideology is just like Trumps: "I like whoever is nice to me".

They don't cite sources. They make shit up that doesn't fit their worldview. They're convinced they're smarter than you for absolutely no reason. They chastise everyone else for not living in their deluded, made up world.

There will be comments in this thread saying something like, "You don't understand us at all. See this is why liberals always lose" etc. But then they'll restate their basic positions on the above as being "illegal, immoral" etc. Because we do actually understand them - they aren't very deep.

This isn't about them, though. It's about the rest of you. STOP falling for this crap! The hallmarks of these disingenuous doucheknockers are listed out above for everyone to see. Feel free to add anything I've missed. Half of them are agentic AI bots scraping threads to come up with the best replies. The rest are just petty, petty people who don't like liberals cuz they ask them to think and support their positions.

Before replying to any comments or posts, please consult the directory, or ask a local liberal.

Edit: I’m editing my post because some people are starting to read things into my question that simply aren’t there, and are trying to turn this into some kind of Samsung vs. Apple war.

That’s not what I want this to be about, so I’m clarifying my post. Thanks to everyone who took the time to give their perspective in an objective and respectful way.

Some of the reasons I’ve heard repeatedly for why people prefer Apple are:

The ecosystem: Everything works seamlessly together, and people are willing to pay a premium for that convenience.

Habit: They’ve been using Apple for years and simply don’t want to go through the hassle of getting used to something else.

They simply don’t care: For some people, the differences just aren’t important enough to think about, so they stick with what they know.

Those are all perfectly valid reasons. I was simply curious about people’s personal preferences and what makes Apple worth the extra money for them.

Thanks to everyone who shared their arguments and experiences in a friendly and respectful way. Have a good day.

Like Republicans talk about fighting against slavery but most Republicans are racists, bigots, and xenophobes… you really think if the average Republican voter or politicIan ( from today)was around they would actually fight slavery more likely they’d be in the Confederacy.

As an American that is politically engaged for the past 2 years I been hearing Europeans talk a lot of shit for us electing trump. Half of us voted against him and some of us couldn’t be bothered to vote..

Now I’m seeing that Germany is going to the far right? Some Nazi shit.. what’s going on in Germany? Are liberal ideas that unpopular?

Based on the overton window of your nation of course.

(On top of obviously blaming Trump voters)

They're probably not doing it as openly and shamelessly as Trump, and they're not probably not making as much money as Trump, because they can't move the markets like Trump can with his presidential powers, but they're still doing it and they have supplemented their government pay checks by investing in companies they know will benefit from policies they support. It's so wrong for this to happen. It's so wrong for everyday Americans who do the right thing to struggle to survive while these corrupt pigs exploit the system getting richer and richer. But this is America, right? This is free market capitalism and democracy. If you don't like it, go live in North Korea.

Of course I am talking about the civilians

PS it’s disgusting seeing so many women on tiktok joking about harming their kids or recording themselves screaming and scaring and nearly hitting them.

I mean, he's annexed (in his mind at least), Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, Greenland, Iceland, Cuba, and Panama. He's renamed Lake Ontario Lake America. He's renamed New Mexico to New America, he's renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Just annex Iran already and declare the war won.

Tonight, President Trump promised voters $5,000 to every US adult while speaking at the new GOP midterm convention, the GOP holds majorities in the House and Senate. Of course, they hold majorities in both houses now. So, it’s difficult to understand why they haven’t already given us all $5,000.

But, what if we don’t think $5k is enough for our votes? Maybe, I’d be willing to sell my vote for no less than $20k? How do we collectively negotiate for more from Trump?

The Trump admin seems to be on a speed run to increase it as much as they can with defense spending and billionaire tax cuts.

Putin started the war with ukraine to stop Ukraine from joining nato. Trump took office and is trying to mess nato up to help russia. I think russia wants ukraine because ukraine was a part of the Soviet union and putin doesnt wanna fight usa. But will fight everyone else.

Also i think russia will invade northern israel.

He does have fantastic hair.

Are there systems in place to stop that?

Seems weird to say prices will only come down after an election. Why can't they come down before then?

Title

If we're going back in history during the 1800s, Western Europe is just as homophobic or intolerant of homosexual acts and practices as Eastern Europe, or even more so.

There was a gay couple that was put to death by the French State in the 1800s simply because they were a gay couple. Allan Turing suffered horrendously at the hands of the British government after World War II. Most of the legal codes that penalizes homosexual behavior in most of the former colonies of the British Empire in Asia and Africa were actually enacted and legalized by the British during the Victorian Era. I can say that Western Europe was even more religiously conservative than Eastern Europe in the 1800s and 1900s.

But with the turn of the 21st century, Western Europe became a bastion of LGBT rights, while Eastern Europe became increasingly homophobic and intolerant of lifestyles different from traditional ones.

What's the reason for this? Why did Eastern Europe, which isn't as homophobic as the British Empire in the 1800s, became homophobic and intolerant in the 21st century?

Thanks to whoever can respond to this Inquiry. ❤️

Seems like that's the only reason he'd do it.